Push diversity in games and media, is it something to look back on fondly? Example: This is when we did the right thing.

I would even disagree with the phrasing "push for diversity". Maybe I'm a cynic, but it seems like a lot of these companies get pulled kicking and screaming into modernity by the creatives that work for them or the audience that supports them. And even then it doesn't support a movement so much as coops it.

Like, it's usually a good thing when more diversity is introduced, but I think it's a mistake to ever think that corporations are your actually advocates of it.

Ultimately? It's fiction. You can do whatever you want, as long as you understand that every piece of art is subject to constructive criticism. That's how art grows and gets better. If an overwhelming amount of that criticism discusses lack of diversity in media, then it might be worth reconsidering the characters you put in your art. Thinking about things from a different perspective can only serve to make you a more well-rounded (and better!) artist and person.

On the other side of that coin, a good critic should encourage aspects of art he or she thinks are important - in this case, diversity - and explain why they think troublesome aspects are problematic, even if it's obvious to the critic.

So am I personally for diversity? I mean, yes, of course. Make things more interesting. Challenge yourself to write about things from a different perspective and challenge the world around you to think about things they maybe wouldn't have. I can tell you from experience that the mere act of seeing people on screen who don't look and act and think like the viewer makes the viewer at least a little bit more likely to accept someone different from himself.

I do agree that companies only ever care about their bottom line, but - at least at present - a diverse cast seems to only help your product make money.

Do I think that other people are against diversity? I think most people, around the US at least, aren't bothered by it. At least, not bothered enough to stop watching Game of Thrones' gay sex scenes and certainly not bothered enough to stop dumping tons of money into every Fast and Furious movie. There are some very, very loud minority groups (there's some irony there) who keep raising Hell about diversity, but the best thing you can do about those guys is keep encouraging diversity in art, whether that's games or books or movies or TV shows or whatever else, and keep talking about it. If we don't talk about it, those loud vocal asshole groups win and the whole concept just gets swept under the rug. If we keep talking about it, those assholes just become fewer and fewer in number until there aren't enough of them to make a fuss.

(And I'm aware that "diversity" can mean more than just skin color and sexual orientation, but those are the first concepts that come to mind when discussing diversity and the easiest to write examples about. Also I'm extremely tired and hope everything above actually answers the thread and makes sense).

Can someone translate this?

The audience for games is bigger and more diverse than ever. It's natural and appropriate that the voices and representation in the games should reflect that. The only people that characterize it as a "push" or being "forced" are generally the sort that video games and the world in general shouldn't bother giving any attention.

I don't have much of an answer to the question, mostly because I think I don't really understand it, but I can put down my thoughts on representation.

As a white AMAB, I've never understood the side of representation people talk about when they say they didn't think they could pursue a career/hobby/talent until they saw someone similar to themselves in that space. It's apparently a default mindset people have that privilege skips; not believing you can do something until you've seen someone else do it.

On the other hand, and maybe unrelatedly, I rarely feel myself identifying with characters. Maybe it's subconscious and people like me generally don't identify with characters because there are so many to relate to - relating to characters is the norm, so it's not something to think about. The only character I've felt myself consciously relating to is Adrian Monk, so maybe that is an aspect of germaphobic/OCD representation.

I think the most important job of diversity and representation in media is giving audiences experience with types of people they wouldn't otherwise see. It was probably really easy for people in the American Midwest to be transphobic and Islamophobic in the past, but now that those types of people are more common in western media, ignorance is less of an excuse. Exposure to different people shows the commonalities and having them represented in different ways shows the multiple sides of them as human beings. It also raises understanding of difficult concepts for people, like gender, and can dissuade audiences from having stereotypes and assumptions.

I think the possibility space in games increases as you are able to work with more diversity. Especially in storytelling, there are certain stories that you just can't tell with the Sam Fischers and Joel Miller's of the world. And for multiplayer games and MMO's, it only makes sense to offer enough options so most people can put something together that represents them the best.

I will say though that i am someone that tends to veer towards singleplayer games that have a nice mixture of action and plot, so when a game like Watch Dogs Legion touts it's ability to play as a whole stable of NPC's, for me i just hear that as 'this game will not be based around a gripping personal story between the protoganist and the world. Every mission has to be written from the idea that it might be a new character showing up to do it'. I think that makes it hard to really feel immersed in the story and limits the stakes. You can't take the protoganist's family hostage when you can use a granny as Avatar in mission 8 and a Football hooligan in mission 9.

For diversity sake, it makes sense to let people create their own character or have a bunch of different avatars available in the singleplayer campaign, but personally i'd rather have the writers focus on one or a handful of characters instead. Naturally that doesn't have to be a gruff white dude in his 40's; I remember being excited about Prince of Persia & Assassins Creed I as a white European, because i'd never played as middle-eastern characters before and that sounded like an interesting premise and location that immediatly sets a game apart from it's peers. i just don't want create-a-characters or avatars in singleplayer campaigns that attempt to have a story. That immediatly flags to me that the story will revolve around the world around you, instead of you being part of the story. That limits what the story can be, and i just happen to prefer stories about characters compared to stories about worlds and crystals and deus ex machina.

Side-thought: I also think this is a main reason why there's no new Splinter Cell. Ubisoft wants to offer some diversity in their games, even letting you choose nowadays between 'the dude' or 'the lady' in their Assassin's Creed and Far Cry games. But Splinter Cell is so focused around Sam Fischer that they must have a hard time figuring out what to do with it. Do they also make a female Sam, and let players go through the entire game as this new character that gets in the same situations as Sam and receives the same narrative beats? Or do they essentially make two campaigns where players can choose to play as the guy or the girl, but will miss out on 50% of the created content on their first playthrough? That's something that devs seem to absolutely hate, especially in AAA-gaming. A RE5-style coop stealth game perhaps?

For me i don't really have opinions about any of it, i'm as neutral as it gets, so when it starts to feel like someone is pushing it in my face in an unnatural way i can't help but be a little miffed but that goes for anything, push anything in my face and i'll be annoyed, but i'm not in a position of requiring change so i'm really not qualified to talk about it.

I have to bring up The Last of Us, both of them, it's a criticism many people have about Neil Druckmann's projects but the choices he makes are kind of blatent and in your face to a point of distraction, that's the worst example i can think of in video games but that's just me, i'm sure lots of people loved the representation.

Do you think the Mass Effect trilogy failed at having a character-focused story?

There honestly should be no problem with video games having people of different races, genders, cultures, etc as the focus. That is after all the real world, not the white utopia that television and video games have been showing for decades in western culture, especially in the United States. There is nothing "woke", "pushed" or "forced" about it. As long as the main character is engaging, with a story that is compelling, it shouldn't matter what the main character looks like. This also goes for any supporting cast. One of the good things that has happened for years now, is both video games, television shows, and films that has proven that you can have a so-called diverse cast and it still be just as entertaining and profitable as a mostly white cast. Things need to continue this way.

@eccentrix: I think Mass Effect made you care about your created character by letting you set a lot of things in motion with your choices across the galaxy and having you interact with interesting worlds and characters as you go from game to game. That's definitly quite well done, but overall it still felt to me like i was playing as an avatar that gets defined by the choices i make throughout the games, instead of taking control of a character with it's own background, traits and quirks. Yeah i know that you pick your background at the start, but that's just not enough for me. I think what i'm saying is that i enjoy it when a writer decides what kind of character we'll play as (Solid Snake, Francis York Morgan, Lara Croft, GTA protagonists, Nathan Drake, John Marston), instead of me going into a world to make choices that decide what kind of character i am. I want to play as the stoic Squall that seems to have a huge disdain for everyone, only for him to eventually decide to do the 'i'll would walk 500 miles, and i would walk 500 more just to be the man that walked a 1000 miles to fall in front of your door' thing. I want to take control over CJ and already feel like i have been living in Grove Street for all my life with my homies. I don't want to choose how he should react to his childhood friends, i just want to see them interact with eachother and have the writing be enjoyable and help to sell the illusion that these are real humans that have a history together before the game.

When i think back on Mass Effect, i do care about the characters and the events that take place, but i don't care about Shepard at all as a character. That was just me picking certain options to make my avatar be a raging asshole in one scene and a nice person in the next one.

I'm in favor of developers creating interesting games from all walks of life. I think in general anyone who starts looking at games that are outside of... certain worldviews... and immediately starts grousing about pushing agendas or whatever is an alarming red flag and I probably don't want to engage with them any further.

Companies are a separate issue. I have no faith in any of them to be genuine about this. Every Brand changes their Twitter avatar during Pride.

@onemanarmyy: That's interesting. I guess Telltale/Quantic Dream style games would fall into the avatar category rather than the set character category, because of the choices being made. The characters become avatars through your influence over them. Once the game starts, they have no personality other than the ones you pick for them.

I can only speak for the United States, but we are in realty diverse and our media should reflect that. Moreover, art throughout history has changed the color, gender, and look of it subjects to fit their own cultural expectations. Our characters in art adapt and I see no problem with a Black Superman any more than I see a problem with an Asian Charlie's Angel. American media should be diverse! European media should be equally as diverse to fully capture the ethnicities & cultures in modern Europe. And, Asia is becoming more diverse as well -all for the better.

However, say this is something to look back on fondly or not misses the point. I would hope that when we or our kids look back they are frustrated that it TOOK SO LONG. The United States was diverse since 1860! By that time the United States had citizens or permeant immigrants from every comer of the globe. I hope the inclusion of new characters and the reimagination of old characters continues so that the delightful diversity of our real world is better reflected in our media.

If we're just talking about mainstream media spaces, I think we've got quite a bit more pushing to do before I can even begin to look back at it fondly. It still ain't great for people of color, especially women of color, LGBTQ+ people, and depictions of people with physical and mental health issues. Just the other day, I had considered going back to Mass Effect, with the trilogy being on Game Pass, until I remember they didn't have gay men to romance in the game until the third one, with one of the only two being a character from the first game, who wasn't romanceable at the time, and could have very well been dead in the story by the time you get to three. As much as people like to applaud diversity in the gaming space, I still struggle to think of a single prominent gay male character in the mainstream space.

I think the main problem with pushing for it is that it will always feel forced. I've got no problem with diverse media because, ultimately, good stuff rises to the top. But again, forcing it has the potential to backfire.

More diversity is good. I watched Encanto, which is about a Colombian family. It was clear that the movie was made by people who are aware of the diversity of Latin American families.

One of the things when it comes to "diversity" is that Americans have a really weird idea of "race" that is not shared by the rest of the world. The modern ideas of "race" are only a few hundred years old; the modern idea of "white" is only about 100 years old.

When it comes to "historical accuracy" in fantasy settings, the arguments are generally rooted in racism. Fucking straight up "great replacement" theory. The medieval and pre-modern worlds were far more integrated via trade than people tend to think. It's true that the majority of people in those times never traveled far from home. It's also true that the protagonists of games, books, and movies tend to be special cases who have reason to travel and see other people.

In short, I don't give a fuck that The Witcher Netflix series has black elves. And someone who is upset by that probably has some shitty views about other stuff. People tend to tell on themselves.

@shindig: I remember seeing all these shows and commercials in the 00's go from being all-white to suddenly consist out of characters where each person had a different cultural background from eachother and being very aware as a kid that that was a clear choice to promote diversity. Or having a talkshow decide to invite the 3 women to talk about a sport instead of the more obvious dudes that everyone else gets to talk about a male-dominated sport. Or having an entire table of women talk about politics instead of the other shows that tend to invite a table of men to talk about politics. And when it comes to talentshows, it feels like every other contestant that gets highlighted is LGBTQI+. When these things happen, it feels like we're still this awkward phase towards a more diverse world, where certain groups are like 'fuck off with your diversity' which prompts other groups to be like 'we will champion diversity by heavily focusing on it'. And that discrepecancy with the real world is something that people tend to pick up on and see as forced.

But i will say that for me, after a decade or two of this stuff, when a minority ends up joining some sort of long running series, it no longer feels like a box is being ticked by the producers for me. It no longer automatically feels outside of the norm for me when a woman gets hired to talk about football. For kids that don't remember a time where 95% of the kids in commercials & media were white, they might straight up have missed that shift and feel like there's nothing forced about a few indian characters being cast for a show. That's probably a good place to be in for society.

I think taking these steps towards more diversity often feel awkward at the start, but it has to start somewhere if you want to end up at a place where it's not a controversial choice to make a main character of a game gay. We'll eventually get a big mainstream shooter where you'll play as a black gay man and the entire internet will attack it for it's obvious wokeness, but these steps need to be taken for it to eventually feel natural that a character that uses a big gun to blast enemies down might also be later on catching a cab to have dinner with his boyfriend. But we're still taking small steps, so all the AAA games feature cool dudes and dudettes to not upset the applecart of the mainstream gamers, while a lot of narratively-driven indiegames heavily feature minorities.

@eccentrix

@justin258 Explains it best, just look at their write-up.

I was dancing around the ideas they wrote not to offend people and not to make this into one of those non-constructive threads where people come in angry that elves in witcher are dark etc. (I found elves in the game that were too and the author doesn't care). In essence, ignore my write-up, I was tired, and English is my second language. The basic idea is diversity are you happy that it is in media more or not, do you think when it's fully integrated into media (it should given the current trend) in the future, you will look at people in the past and say...wow we took this long this was simple and needed...or will you do what some on the internet do and continually state...agenda push F this series, might as well make black panther Asian or some ridiculous claim.

Id say they still have personality of their own. The main in walking dead 1, still faces microaggressions that would go over the head of some players who aren't minorities or not sensitive to these situations. He immediately gets asked if the little girl with him is someone who knows him, in a sorta condescending way during a zombie apocalypse, more clear is the identity of him being a minority in that location, there is a father of a daughter that is hinted at being annoyed and untrusting of him not due to his character but the color of his skin. He seems to hint that he knows the daughter likes him and they have chemistry and hates it just cause his skin and the stereotypes he links to it. Further, Kenny takes way longer to liken up to him and has off-hand comments about him being a minority and the stereotypes that come with it. We also have Kenny's whole arc being him overcoming his harsh personality in 2 and coming to love a little girl (who is a minority) like his son. It's an interesting way where diversity issues are handled well that people who are minorities love kenny who seems a bit racist. That said that could all be things I'm seeing and others not. But overall, a lot of character can be built of essentially an avatar. Even the dragon born in Skyrim seems to have a personality, they are helpful and crave exploring.

PS: kinda sad that so many people in the poll dont like diversity or clicked I dont care...they cared enough to go into a poll and read about the diversity issue and let everyone know they skewed the data so they can say F this i dont care. Sad.

In general I'm for creative freedom and equal opportunity. Other than that this is too broad a subject to really give a blanket response to for or against, there are obviously pros and cons. But when you say push it gives it (for me anyway) more of a negative association which you don't clarify much in your post, but I assume it's about identity and representation from discussions I've seen elsewhere online.

I guess I can say that games are more diverse now than only about 10-20 years ago and that it's for the better. Although when looking backwards through certain channels, I would also say that things like youtube have homogenized retro gaming culture more in some ways, with certain games, genres and themes being canonized as the best and others as inferior based mainly on nostalgia and popularity in the US at the time they were new. Speaking from a european perspective.

@onemanarmyy: Yeah, it's been going on long enough that it doesn't feel out of place. It's hard for me to say if the missteps taken in TV/Film/Games are overblown by media outlets jumping on it. Or twitter's hot reactions.

So much of it lies in the execution, too. I don't want a marginalised character who's sole dimension to their character is their gender/sex/race or whatever. That way it does feel like a box being ticked.

We need to praise the Metal Gear Solid games more for having so many characters with different racial/ethnic backgrounds, ideologies, ages, body types, and sexual proclivities and making them actually matter in the context of the games.

This. This this this. All the diversity that some redditors bemoan as being "pushed by the company" were actually fought for tooth and nail by the devs making the game. More kinds of folks are in game dev now and the projects reflect that.

As a random black guy on the internet who likes various forms of entertainment: There's a fine line between "pushing for diversity" in the sense of including multiple races, ethnicities, cultures, genders (and so on) because said differences are actually relevant to the story that the writers are trying to tell wile being respectful towards each included group of people and ideologies, and just including said differences in the most shallow, stereotypical and low-effort ways possible just to say that the team included diversity as a part of their portfolio; the latter of which is the type of bullshit that I'm very critical of these days thanks in part to modern times.

Here's my issue with "pushing for diversity", it's very much an America-centric thing. Depending on where you are in the world it can feel anywhere from way way too liberal to outdated and old-fashioned. I grew up in the early 90s and I just barely hit the tail-end of diversity being normalized in our schools. So watching people still championing this stuff 20-30 years later just gets old. I get it though, every culture has to go through its strides. But when I see it being over-zealously pushed I just can't help but groan to myself.

i think more diversity can lead to more interesting things. as a straight white female who used to be married to a black man its been nice to see things expand. i have friends of all forms and letting them be represented in culture is always a good thing imo. my only issue i'll ever have is when something does feel forced. if you chase money towards X trend when the original vision from the creator was Y then things usually lead to bad/subpar results. granted thats not always the case but a general thing. i don't think its good for things to toss in a token character just for the sake of having them. genuine things always come across better so if something is intended to be in there then it should be and forcing something in isn't going to make things better instead it'll probably rub ppl the wrong way and worse it can push a stereotype with just makes things worse imo.

I feel like the "Forced diversity is bad because it makes one-dimensional stereotypes" isn't a real problem. It doesn't make diversity worse or harder. It might make your movie worse, but in the grand scheme of things, is another shitty movie really the thing to be concerned with here? What are the actual repercussions? Does that shitty Ghostbusters reboot actually make it harder for a movie to have an all-female lead cast? Do disingenuous portrayals actually inform anyone's thoughts on diversity? I mean, other than bigots, who then get to point at a thing and go "This is why diversity is bad!"? Bad characters can be ignored. A lack of representation shouldn't be.

I guess if I have one question in respect to the idea of "forced" or "pushed" diversity, particularly in the case where a developer is "forced" to have a more diverse cast/story/location/whatever, is how anyone knows when something is forced on a dev? If the idea is that publishers are forcing devs to have more diversity, without ALSO including more diverse voices on the dev team (an obvious problem), then I understand that. But it's hard to imagine that happens that often, based on the majority of the stories you hear. Often it seems like publishers tend to, as another poster said, seem to be pulled kicking and screaming toward more diverse inclusions, not the other way around.

Some say diversity is forced, but I say the the status quo is being overly protected.

Most of the world IS diverse, and is growing more so! Our media is not being forced into divrsity, it is just our true diversty slowly being ALLOWED to be expressed. It not just multiple ethicnites living in one place in our nantions. The biggest enthic/cultural group that is showing growth is multiethic - people who's backgrounds is two or more ethincities. Humanity is destine for Infinite Diversity from Infinite Combinations. That might sound like corney Star Trek Vulcan IDIC, but it our reality.

I think a culture of misogyny and anti-diversity is prevalent in game development. I genuinely want to know the most effective ways to tackle these issues, but it feels like playing whack-a-mole in today's culture of dis/misinformation.

My issue with more "grandiose" movements in media is with big tech. I highly doubt big tech is actually motivated to tackle these issues head-on. Google, twitter, fb, none of these mega-corporations are motivated to help good causes (outside of occasional good PR). They're motivated to increase engagement and profit, regardless of the human cost. People like to say, "can't it be both?" but this is very naive, in my view. QAnon's reach grew in large part because of sites like facebook. Yes, there are good movements on the platform like #MeToo, but you also have terrible movements that don't reach the light of day until something explodes. Follow the money.

Inclusiveness is good, and as a bonus effect of just being inclusive we get to anger all the people who see inclusiveness as a negative. The more in your face inclusive something is, the more I like it. Taking a bold-ass stance against elitism/gatekeeping/bigotry will always be good. Don't even really care about the motivation either.. Corporations are large and employ tons of people, when they make "the right decision", regardless of the reason, there are people working there who feel good about it. I'm happy for them at the very least.

Nothing bad about inclusiveness. Anyone who says otherwise deserves to have it rubbed in their face until they see the light, that's the least we can do for them.

Sensitive topic. I support more diversity in media but as a counterargument it sometimes comes off as companies just ticking checkboxes off their lists, and once you start to see that it becomes impossible to unsee. Fact is most people hang out with people who are like them and so these full rainbow casts of characters can come off as unrealistic and preachy. And I've noticed that minorities in media rarely have any negative traits so those characters are boring, at the same time I understand the producers want to avoid the "they think every X is like this!" criticism. As an example, rather than having one black character in a movie or a video game I'd like to see a product whose most entire cast is black and we as a society just aren't there yet.

I think you're being far too optimistic with your assumption. I don't think "fully integrated" diversity is in our future. There won't be a time where we look back and wonder what took us so long to accept each other's differences, because it will never happen. We need to keep working towards it, but it will always be a struggle until the end of humanity.

If your question was "do you think there should be diversity in media?", the answer would be "of course." I don't understand the parts of your post where you appear to be responding to some anti-diversity discussion that doesn't exist, or maybe you're trying to draw out bigots from the Giant Bomb forums or something. All I'm saying is that the "push for diversity" isn't something to look back on as if it's no longer a thing.

Diversity in culture of games or any other medium is a good thing. I like playing as something other than what I am, and seeing cultural influences I wouldn’t see from my own background.

There is the cynical take that isn’t wrong that it’s just companies widening their product appeal, and I do think that the 1000 year old vampires at the top of any corporation are only getting onboard to do the old capitalist co-opting to build their profits. But they only give the thumbs up or down. The actual representation comes from the creatives working in those mediums.

@besetment: anti-diversity is a thing. I'm not trolling for hate, GB is not a place known for any of that. There are people even given the results in the poll that think diversity as in putting more characters from different walks of life, not just skin tone or women and men, is not good cause it somehow affects their game, medium, or whatever they're using to be entertained. I just inserted my take since touchy subjects like this tend to get responses where people think I'm on the side of disliking diversity. I just wanted it known that nope, I like diversity in all shapes and forms, and was wondering how others felt about the trend to get more of it in media vs decades ago. Seems good but many will and have stated the trend is just for money or not genuine. I don't agree with all this just stating what others have discussed. Another poster explained my post better above, English isn't my first language.